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With the Fall semester in full swing, many new chapters, and chapters looking for greater success, may be wondering, "What can I do to boost my chapter's membership?" The answer lies in how you recruit. The heart of any recruitment drive is tabling. Effective tabling can mean the difference between no new faces at your next meeting, and ten (or more) new faces at your next meeting. This is a guide to effective tabling strategies, as my chapter (Hamline University) has discovered them.

Table early, table often: the most crucial period for tabling is at the beginning of a semester, especially Fall semester. This is the time when Freshman and transfer students are looking to get involved on campus.

Even if you're part of a well-established chapter that has been operating on campus for a number of years, you never know whether a new batch of students will contain your next superstar. They could be a future President, Vice President, or Treasurer, so the earlier you catch the attention of students new to your school, the higher the chance YAL will become their first commitment, before they find other orgs to command their free time.

Also, ask your campus activities office about student org fairs at your school. The students who come to these fairs are specifically seeking involvement, so there's a good chance that at least some of them will sign up.

If possible, try to schedule multiple tabling days each week for the first two weeks of the semester. If you don't catch the right students on one day, you may catch them on another!

Variety: varying your tabling schedule for different times of the day means a higher chance that new people seeing you table. Most people have set routines, passing through the building you table by during the same time, regularly. Ask your activities office which buildings are available for tabling; varying location, like varying time, increases the chance of reaching students who aren't yet familiar with YAL.

Get creative: just like in a job interview, presentation matters. Although YAL sends your chapter all it needs to make a pretty table, it's up to you to decide how enticing your setup will be. Many blog posts on this site document tabling that chapters across the country have done, and of them, many have pictures of their particular table's setup. Browsing these could provide much-needed inspiration.

Be unique: consider personalizing your table. Even some flair as simple as your school's bumper sticker on your table's YAL banner will give fellow students the sense of YAL as a home-grown organization that is ingrained in your campus community.

Don't know what your campus will respond to? The best way of finding out is greeting passers-by your table with a question, e.g "Do you like Ron Paul?" "Do you want to legalize marijuana?" "Do you like guns?", etc. Keep track of which questions draw in the most people, and consider making signs asking those same questions for future display.

Follow up: it's best to have your next meeting within a few days of when you table. Remember to tell any new sign-ups when your next meeting will be. Send a follow-up email to them regarding the meeting time and place. College students have a lot to keep track of, so they may forget if they don't have this information in writing!

Don't get discouraged: you may end up with 60 signatures on your clipboard by week's end, or you may end up with 6. Twelve people may show up to your next meeting, or two. Even if your numbers turn out underwhelming, tabling early, often, and in a variety of locations is free advertising for your chapter--it promotes name recognition. Gaining exposure is a "win" in itself, as it builds your org's presence on campus.

Just remember, tabling works, and effective tabling works even better.

The Elizabethtown College Young Americans for Liberty hosted a "Voice your Concerns" event on February 23 with the goal of offering students a way to share their concerns with fellow students, staff, and the administration.

Students who were not able to attend a prior campus-wide meeting with the president utilized this opportunity to express their concerns. The event was a huge success and students, as well as staff and professors, were able to engage in interesting conversations about many issues on campus.

Our free speech wall was filled with a variety of concerns! Students had many unanswered questions that will later be discussed in student Senate as well as some constructive suggestions for what we can do to make a change.

This was a great way to ignite a fire within students and get them thinking about the many ways in which our school infringes on their rights. They have a better understanding of what is going on behind the scenes and are showing interest in becoming more involved in the movement towards change.

Because of some technical difficulties and setbacks, I was unable to post this on the day of the drive. However, here it is! This was our first attempt at recruiting students at University of Texas El Paso to join and support us on our libertarian mission towards freedom and equality for all! We had a great turnout!

The first of many collaborations between YAL chapters at New Mexico State University and University of Texas El Paso went extremely well. We all celebrated our right to bear arms, as stated in the 2nd Amendment. We also advocated the pursuit of liberty by encouraging students to consider putting gun control in the hands of the people, not the government. Less government control means more power to the people!

As we all know, more guns means less crime. And more restrictions means more opportunities for criminals. So we at YAL San Francisco State University decided to dress up as criminals and advocate for gun control.

We had a list of gun statistics displayed, with sources available, to convey the message that an armed society is a safe society.

Of course we faced some resistance, but there were many students that believed in the 2nd amendment. Actually with the rise in police brutality, more people feel that our right to defend ourselves is becoming ever more crucial, especially against an oppressive state. Maybe there's hope for liberty in San Francisco after all!

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity, and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. – Carl Sagan

As a result of tabling all week for our "End the Drug War" event, YAL at Auburn University collected 66 new sign-ups and had a total meeting attendance of 58 on Thursday, February 12. We hosted Dr. Mark Thornton to speak about the "War on Drugs." Dr. Thornton is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, a retired economics professor, the Book Review Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and a published author. After Dr. Thornton's lecture, "End the Drug War" materials were given as prizes for a jeopardy game.

According to the Pew Research Center, 54% of people believe that the use of marijuana should be legalized. Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington State have all legalized recreational use of the drug, while 23 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical use. Yet 1.5 million individuals were arrested in 2013 on non-violent drug charges.

How will this change? Dr. Thornton wishes to create a truly legal, free market that would promote the eventual rise of competitive large industries to improve product quality and create standardization.

In a free market, product attributes would develop (i.e. a method of production, filtration, and packaging) and the potency would become consistent. There is no standard in the black market; the potency of marijuana has increased from .4 of 1% in the 1970s to over 10% today. Some samples are sold at 60%, and some are even close to 100% potency of THC. A free market would promote a standard potency to insure consistency of doses.

Individual rights are key in the libertarian philosophy. We do not believe that the government’s role is to protect us from ourselves. If we are not free to decide for ourselves what to put in our bodies, we are not really free. (Anyway, no one has ever died from marijuana consumption.)

I had the honor of attending the International Students for Liberty conference in DC from February 13-15. This conference was a great opportunity for people who love liberty to get together, network with libertarian organizations, and listen to as well as meet amazing speakers.

The night started off with Edward Snowden speaking to the crowd of 1,700 students via live-stream to talk about the issue of privacy and liberty in the United States. It was followed by a great discussion with Dr. Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano.

Other speakers included Jeffrey Tucker, John Stossel, David Boaz, Rep. Justin Amash, Rep. Thomas Massie, former Mexican President Vincente Fox, and many others.

It truly is remarkable just how far the message of liberty is spreading. When I attended the conference I had the opportunity to meet people from around the world including those from Africa, South America, Asia and Australia. It's not just about liberty within America but liberty throughout the world. I'm glad I had the opportunity to attend and would recommend many others to attend future ISFL conferences.

Our recently formed Winona State University chapter has started making an effort to reach students on campus this semester. The political culture on campus tends toward the statist, but everyone we've talked to on campus agrees with the libertarian political ideology on one issue or another.

On February 17 we set up a game of "Pin the Drone on the Warzone" which attracted more attention than our previous tabling efforts. We were approached by a number of people, including a very sympathetic anti-interventionist democrat and a pro-intervention soldier who engaged us in a lengthy but constructive discussion. We scored a number of new sign-ups for the mailing list, but still hope to find more libertarians on campus with the new flyers we posted last week.

UNC YAL has been busy this semester! As the hosts of the North Carolina YAL state convention, our first month was spent tabling and recruiting students to the cause of liberty.

On February 7, UNC YAL hosted the North Carolina YAL state convention at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Over 150 activists gathered to learn more about what they could do to advance the liberty movement and to hear from some of the top liberty leaders in the nation.

The activism training, led by Christopher Doss and Nancy Smith (both from the Leadership Institute), began around 9:00AM The training focused on running campaigns and three key takeaways. First, going door-to-door will always be the gold standard for grassroots activism. Second, the volunteers are the heart and soul of any grassroots campaign, so treat them well and reward them. And finally, know your base if you're running a grassroots “get out the vote” campaign, but focus on the undecided voters.

The afternoon session was dedicated to hearing from some of the top liberty leaders, and some of the pro-liberty organizations who help make our activism possible. There were three keynote speakers who delivered outstanding speeches.

Representative Walter Jones spoke to the crowd about two major issues: illegal wars and the country’s debt level. Rep. Jones spoke about his contempt for the War on Terror. He presented the audience with an image of a little girl holding a woman’s hand at a military funeral and explained how he personally feels responsible. Rep. Jones said he would never have any seniority placement on a House committee because he continues to speak out against the unconstitutional wars. Jones then connected the wars to the debt levels, and said it’s up to us to put a stop to it. One of the best moments of the day was when our president and North Carolina YAL State Chair, Alex Johnson, surprised Rep. Walter Jones with a birthday cake. All the attendees joined in and sang happy birthday to the Congressman.

John Allison, president of the Cato Institute, spoke about the differences between selfishness and altruism, and how progressives use the latter to their advantage. According to Allison, progressives interpret “equal opportunity” to mean “equal outcomes.” He further stated that society has been indoctrinated to believe that selfishness is evil. Mr. Allison refuted this stating that one must act is his or her own self-interest to survive. For example, if someone eats vegetables to improve their health (a selfish act), can it really be said they are acting with evil intent?

The final speaker, Clarence Henderson, is a man of courage. On February 2, 1960, Henderson participated in a sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina in order to call attention to segregation and other racial injustices in the United States. As he spoke, he drew from the words of many famous Americans, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Henderson told us about his reasons for participating in the sit-ins using two inspiring words from the Declaration of Independence, “unalienable rights.” Mr. Henderson told us that although “the fire of racism has been extinguished,” our unalienable rights are still under attack in many forms.

The convention was a success, and it gained us a few new chapter members! We were even featured in the Daily Tar Heel, which is encouraging to see on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s campus. Liberty is becoming more popular, and we are excited to share it with the rest of our student body this semester.

This blog post was written by UNC YAL members: Austin Bright and Alex Johnson.

Young Americans for Liberty at the Gulf Park campus of the University of Southern Mississippi participated in "My Two Cents Day" on February 12. We did this to inform the students about their portion of the national debt and asked them to express how this made them feel, both on campus and through social media. We also asked the students to write their representatives about how they felt.

We hosted an informative "Lunch and Learn" with local libertarian activist Danny Bedwell. We provided sodas, pizza, and cupcakes to the students and they ate while Mr. Bedwell spoke to the students about the national debt and walked them through the numbers.

We also held a tabling event where we displayed the national debt ticker and explained to the students how it effects them on an individual level. The students expressed their felling on a display board and uploaded selfies to Facebook and Twitter.